


The Quiet Game

by M_Moonshade



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, POV Elim Garak, Season 2, mind games gone awry, touch-starved Garak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 04:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30033198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Moonshade/pseuds/M_Moonshade
Summary: Garak's latest attempt to toy with Doctor Bashir backfires spectacularly.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 24
Kudos: 124
Collections: Don't Press That Button First Line Challenge





	The Quiet Game

“’—whatever you do, don’t press that button—'” Bashir interrupts himself to take another heaping mouthful, and _guls_ , how he hasn’t aspirated already is anybody’s guess. “’—because it’ll give you an electric shock’. Not enough to hurt them, of course, but still significant enough to be painful. And then the examiner steps out of the room.”

“And then?” Garak can guess how this story ends, but he keeps his expression carefully neutral. There have been enough misunderstandings between about cultural mores. He remembers all too clearly Julian’s abject despair about turning _thirty_ —somehow ignorant of the fact that Garak was nearly forty-five when they met. The last thing he wants to do now is respond with horror at what’s meant to be amusing, or vice versa—at least not unless he foresees an interesting conversation arising from it.

“Within fifteen minutes, as many as sixty-seven percent of participants elected to shock themselves—some of them repeatedly. There was no outside stimulus, no prompting. Only the threat of being left alone with nothing but their own thoughts.”

“In fifteen minutes,” Garak repeats. By now it’s clear that Bashir intends for this story to be shocking, and in a way it is. Long stretches of silence were a favorite tactic during his time as an interrogator, but always in conjunction with something else—pain, or threats, or chemical assistance. Without them, one of his subjects had lasted four hours before he broke, but that was anecdotal. Who’s to say whether that incident spoke more to the resolve of Doctor Parmak specifically or Cardassians as a whole?

He considers presenting the question to Bashir, but discards it immediately. Such an obvious question would as good as forfeit the ‘plain and simple tailor’ game they’re playing. Even worse, presenting the idea so bluntly might disgust the young doctor enough to put him off their weekly lunches altogether, and that isn’t something Garak will risk.

Indirectly, though…

Doctor Bashir won’t be chased away by an idea that’s simply hypothetical. A show of skills, perhaps, divorced from their more unpleasant contexts.

Yes. That might work. Garak can already hear Bashir fawning over him, his dark eyes wide, his steps bouncing, his lips stretching into a grin as he tries to suppress his glee. Garak lives for those moments, parcels them out for special occasions like a rare vintage and savors the memories of them long after. They fill his mind in those long quiet hours when even the wire can’t keep the loneliness at bay.

In the week before their next meeting, he obsessively crafts and refines and discards his plans. He can’t be too obvious. If he lets slip that he craves attention, then Bashir might indulge him for a short while, but soon enough he’ll get bored and move on to some other novelty. No, he must be sly about it. He must keep the bright-eyed doctor engaged.

By their next shared meal, he’s satisfied that his strategy is perfect.

He arrives early and orders a meal that won’t be diminished by going cold. He sits in his usual spot, with his back to the wall and his seat angled to give him an unbroken view of Bashir’s favorite entrance. The moment the doctor arrives in the replimat, Garak schools his expression into careful, composed neutrality. He doesn’t let it falter when he nibbles at his salad, nor when Bashir finally emerges from the line with a tray and a smile.

“You’re here early,” Bashir remarks, sitting down across the table. “I hope I haven’t kept you long.”

Garak takes another bite. Chews far more thoroughly than the vegetation requires. Swallows.

Bashir frowns. “Garak?”

This is the game.

It cannot be played exactly like the Terran experiment. Bashir would recognize it too quickly for what it is.

Garak makes the first move. “I believe you and I have something to discuss.”

In place of the empty room, he has the replimat. In place of silence, a stone-faced lunch companion. In place of an electric shock, his own mouth.

He blinks. “Oh?”

The next move. Garak says nothing.

Long seconds pass before Bashir takes his next turn: “What exactly did you want to talk about?”

Faster this time, almost on the tail of Bashir’s question: “Don’t demean yourself further, Doctor. Playing stupid doesn’t suit you.”

Bashir goes pale. Oh, that struck a nerve.

“I… don’t know what you mean,” he says, but clearly he has a few ideas lurking in that clever mind.

“I think you do.” Garak lets the accusation linger for only a moment. He’s pressed this angle far too long already; too much longer and the vagaries will become obvious. He lets the barest hint of frustration color his stare. “Be honest. Did you ever plan to tell me?”

The doctor’s eyes are wide as a hunted beast, and anxiety rolls off him like a heady perfume. It’s intoxicating. Just a few carefully worded questions, and Bashir is thrown completely off balance, frantic and reeling. And then something shifts in his features. He’s regained his footing, but his position has changed.

Ah, so he's figured it out already, has he? Clever boy.

Garak almost laughs, but he manages to keep it restrained. Better not to crow his victory until Bashir officially concedes.

But it isn’t quite the concession he expected.

Bashir leans in and lowers his voice. “Do—do you really want to talk about this _here_?”

“I don’t see why not.”

He wets dry lips with the tip of his tongue. “How much did you hear, exactly?”

“Does that really matter? It hardly changes the reality of the situation.”

“I suppose it doesn’t.” He looks aside. Lowers his voice further. “Listen, I’m sorry. That—that can’t have been comfortable for you. But also, what did you expect? I know you like to be all suave and mysterious, but it’s polite to at least let me know you’ll be breaking into my room in the dead of night. It was only a matter of time before you saw something you’d rather you didn’t.”

Oh? Now this is interesting. Garak hasn’t played that particular game in quite some time now. He spears another leaf of his salad and brings it resolutely to his mouth.

Bashir continues frantically, “No—that came out wrong—I don’t mean it to sound like you deserved to find out that way. Honestly, I didn’t mean for you to find out at all. It’s—it’s all subconscious. I don’t know how Cardassians are about their dreams, but we humans can’t control them. Or some can, but I’ve never been much good at lucid dreaming, and I’m nowhere near able to determine what I say when I talk in my sleep. Trust me, I would have spared myself some truly embarrassing breakups if I could.”

Garak puts the fork down. It takes all his muscular control to keep the grin off his face. He hasn’t had this much fun in years.

“What I’m trying to say is, I didn’t mean to—to make you uncomfortable. My—my feelings are my own problem to deal with, not yours. If that’s what you want, I’m perfectly content to keep things strictly platonic between us.”

Wait.

“Platonic?” Garak repeats, is voice devoid of any intonation.

“I’ve kept it to myself this long, haven’t I?” Bashir’s smile is a brittle sliver of hope, cracking under the weight of his resignation. “God, Garak. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been in love with you?”

Garak blinks. Blinks again. He wants to come up with a reply, but his mind has been reduced to buzzing static.

“Garak?”

This doesn’t happen. Not to him.

No.

Questions like this prompt confessions, of course. All the time. Usually of the most guilty, salacious nature. But this isn’t salacious. Is it? Isn’t it?

A new kind of horror rises on Bashir’s face. “That… that wasn’t you in my room the other night, was it?”

This time it’s Garak who’s forced to fill the silence. “No.”

"I was still asleep, wasn't I? You being there-- that was part of the dream."

Garak has no answer for him.

“Was that… not… what you wanted to talk about?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Ah. Alright, then.” Bashir sounds far away, as preternaturally calm as a man who’s just been impaled. “What were you wanting to discuss?”

The truth is out of the question, but Garak’s malfunctioning mind can’t string together a lie. All he can manage is, “You know, I don’t recall.”

“Okay. Well.” Julian stands up, leaving his tray behind. “If you’ll excuse me.”

And then he’s gone.

* * *

Thanks to the Federation’s ridiculous ideas about doctor-patient confidentiality, all of the security cameras in the infirmary have been dismantled. Never mind that Garak doesn’t care a whit about the patients—he needs to get an eye on Doctor Bashir.

Sewing has done nothing to settle his nerves. Neither has pacing the length of the shop, or ripping a particularly stubborn bit of Ionian twill to shreds when it snagged on a needle. The only thing that helps his mood even slightly is the camera aimed at the infirmary’s entrance. If Bashir leaves, Garak will know in an instant. Unless he’s left already—no, he hasn’t. He wouldn’t have.

This is insane. A complete overreaction. This kind of behavior is unacceptable for a man of his training and rank—even if that status has since been rescinded.

But another part of him—the part that has long since come to terms with labels like _spoonhead_ and _exile_ —is frothing at the mouth. Bashir is his only real connection to the leadership on Deep Space Nine, the only reliably friendly face within the quadrant, his only friend on this frozen tomb of a station, and he might have ruined it all with a poorly-thought-out game.

It can’t be over. Not now. Not when there are so many more conversations he wanted to have with the man, so many books he wanted to share, so many awe-struck smiles he wanted to tease out of him.

And he could have! He could have had all of it! In the confines of his shop, he comes up with a thousand and one clever replies that might have salvaged the situation, but all of them are wasted on the empty air.

Movement on the screen catches his eye. Scores, perhaps hundreds of bodies have moved past the infirmary door, but Bashir’s form is so distinct in his mind that he might as well be glowing. Everything about him—that shoulder-forward lean, that hurried gait, that lanky frame—sets him apart from the rest of the crowd.

For a moment Garak wants to burst out of the shop and chase after him—but no. He’s no hound baying for a mark. He knows better—that kind of mad hunt will only drive Bashir to ground. No. No.

Instead he clings to his viewscreen. When Bashir steps out of sight of the first camera, Garak switches to a different input, then a third. He follows the doctor’s movements to Quark’s, lingers on him while he makes a purchase—a bottle, though the resolution on the feed isn’t high enough to make out a label—and departs unaccompanied into a turbolift.

A quick input of codes confirms what he already knows: the turbolift stops in the habitat ring, and Bashir makes a beeline to his own quarters.

Good.

Yes.

Garak tries not to rush through closing his shop. Best not to make it glaringly obvious that Bashir is being pursued. The doctor needs time to calm down, relax, perhaps imbibe some of that liquor to calm his nerves. But not too long. Whatever ideas are swimming through Bashir’s head right now, Garak doesn’t want to give them time to gel.

(Why can’t the state-forsaken wire take away anxiety as easily as it does his pain? This would be so much easier if he could _think_.)

He presses the door chime.

No answer.

That infernal silence is far less entertaining when it’s fixed on him.

Another chime. A cleared throat. A raised voice. “Doctor Bashir, I believe we have a conversation to finish.”

After far too long, he can barely hear the voice on the other side. “Come in.”

The door hisses open. Bashir stands on the far end of the room, close to the window. An assortment of furniture fills the chamber between them, and surely Bashir didn’t mean to stand like that, on the other side of the large chair, looking for all the world like he wants to hide behind it.

Garak doesn’t expect the pang in his chest when he steps inside. He didn’t intend to inflict the hurt that bows those elegant shoulders. Those bright eyes are clouded over with dread, bracing for yet another blow. But Bashir takes it with all the courage of a dissident facing execution. “Did you remember what you were upset about?”

In a lifetime of service, Garak has bowed his head and acknowledged failure. He has begged for mercy. But he has never apologized. He’s always known that it would do him no good. And now that it might, he doesn’t know how.

So he does the only thing he can. He lies.

“Yes,” he says slowly. Carefully. “And I realized that I was being… unfair to you.” Across the room, Bashir’s brow twitches. “I’m afraid I don’t handle jealousy well.”

“What are you talking about?” Thank the ancestors that Bashir has already started on his bottle.

“Watching you flirt with tourists and diplomats and dabo girls.” Garak reflects back that brittle smile he saw before. “I regret to say it struck a nerve. I reacted poorly.” In this context, the words come easily. “I apologize for upsetting you. And for… making you feel that you had to reveal things you didn’t intend to.”

Bashir swallows. “I wasn’t just saying what I thought you wanted to hear.” He sets down his glass. Visibly braces himself before he looks up again. “I meant it.”

It’s hard to focus with that pulse-beat racing in his ears. The best strategies are useless if their agents balk in the heat of the moment.

He tries to rally his nerves, but Bashir gets there first.

“Is… this… something you want to try?” He takes a step forward—and oh, how did the room get to be so small?

Garak takes a step back. Focus.

“Do you have any idea what that would entail?” he asks. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m hardly the most popular man on this station. There are those who would react unkindly to seeing you in my company.”

Bashir takes another step forward. “I can handle it.”

“Even if they include the likes of Dukat?” Garak tries to step again, but his back hits the bulkhead. “You saw the lengths he was willing to pursue to satisfy a grudge.” Julian keeps coming toward him, but there’s understanding in his eyes. “I couldn’t ask you to put yourself in that kind of danger.”

There it is: not a rejection, but a tragic concession to the vagaries of fate. A poetic end to an impossible love.

So why does Bashir keep coming?

He’s close enough now that Garak can see the sparks of green and gold in his dark eyes. “Isn’t that my choice to make?”

And then there’s no distance between them at all. Bashir’s slender hands are cupped around his face, and he’s kissing him, and _oh no_ , Garak did not expect this. But it’s been so long since anyone’s held him this way, and his lips are so soft, and he can taste the embers of alcohol on his breath, and he can’t make himself pull away.

Garak has been parched for so long, rationing out affection as meagerly as he can stand—just brush of fingers here, a smile there, a treasured look in those bright eyes—and here he is, sweet and inviting as an oasis, and if Garak gets too close he just might drown.

Bashir pulls back just slightly, his brow against Garak’s ridges, the unyielding bone of his skull against the curve of his _chufa_ , and does he have any _idea_ what that means?

“Please,” he whispers into the quiet space between them. “Let me try.”

As if Garak had any choice at all.

He’s already been swept away.

**Author's Note:**

> The study mentioned in the beginning was conducted by UC San Francisco in 2014. The 67% rate is a bit deceptive, though-- 67% of male participants pushed the button, while 25% of female participants did. I fudged some numbers for the sake of the story.


End file.
